Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has assured South Africa that as the shareholder representative, she will work closely with the board to ensure that Eskom remains stable.

Reacting to the resignation of Eskom CEO Brian Molefe on Friday, Brown said she was saddened by the resignation, but respects his decision.

“I am confident that Mr Molefe leaves a strong executive team in place to continue to deliver on Eskom’s mandate and implementation of the turnaround strategy.”

On Friday, Molefe announced that his resignation will be effective 1 January 2017.

Molefe said his decision to step down follows the publication by former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s report into alleged State capture.

Molefe, however, said his resignation was not an act of admission or wrongdoing on his part but rather he felt it was the correct thing to do in the interest of the company and good cooperate governance.

Wishing him well for the future, Brown said Molefe had been instrumental in developing Eskom’s turnaround strategy, which is beginning to yield positive results. She said it was disappointing that he will not be present to see it to complete fruition.

“He leaves the company at a time when Eskom’s mid-term results showed an improvement.

“The mid-term results, released last week, showed that Eskom’s liquidity improved; revenue increased by 10.5% year-on-year to R97.1bn; the accelerated maintenance programme improved plant availability from 71.23% to 78.50%; unplanned breakdowns improved from 14.75% to 9.72%, and we have had 460 days without load shedding.”

Furthermore, the utility managed to connect 99,869 households to the grid for the period under review and the company must be congratulated for connecting more households in 22 years of democracy to the grid than the previous 70 years of minority rule.